No, I’m not talking about flying reindeer. I mean going to the airport on December 25 to catch a flight to visit relatives. This will be about the tenth year I’ve done it, and it’s really a good choice for choral musicians with responsibilities on Christmas Eve.
When you fly on Dec. 23 or 24, it’s crowded, and everybody is stressed. There are lots of excited children, everybody has extra luggage, they’ve spent the last week shopping/cooking/wrapping/panicking. Flights are full, often overbooked, and people get bumped. Flights get delayed by weather, or cancelled, adding to the stress of people worried that it will “ruin” their Christmas if they don’t arrive in time.
Dec. 25 has none of that.
Travelers on Christmas Day are typically people who have to work Christmas Eve. Besides musicians, there are soldiers, public safety officers such as firemen, college students who found flight bargains, and so on. There are few families, and flights aren’t full. The airport is less crowded, but the main difference is that it’s so much more relaxed. Nobody who’s in an airport on Christmas Day has an expectation of a perfect Hallmark-card Christmas. They’ve been expecting to be in an airport. And the employees, too, have known for weeks that they’d have to work on Christmas Day, and they’re over it. Many of them wear Santa hats or other decorative clothing; sometimes the airlines pass out candy canes, and it’s generally friendlier, and may I say better Christmas spirit, all around.
Of course, we’ll still be subject to gate-groping, but you can’t have everything.
James D. Feiszli says